re: What is fundamentally "evil" about communism IYO?(Posted by foshizzle on 11/20/12 at 8:50 pm to PenguinNinja)

quote:Been reading up a lot about 20th century history, and the bits about the October Revolution, WWII's Hitler v. Stalin component, and the Cold War got me wondering about the Poliboard's views on the fundamental problems with communism.

There are several fundamental problems. Under pure Marxism, the idea is that value derives solely from the amount of labor put into making something, which is sheer nonsense. Communism as practiced in the USSR took demand into account as well, but in only a mathematical way. Instead of observing how people buy and sell at various prices, Gosplan had armies of statisticians who would try to predict what demand would be. Of course they failed utterly and people gamed the system repeatedly.

Those are the economic failings, at any rate. Political failings were different but IMHO had less to do with communism specifically than with people who thought they really knew what was best and would save "the people" from folly, whether they liked it or not.